“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” As events abroad propel our nation from the illusions of detente to the reality of the New Cold War, and the calendar moves inexorably toward the presidential election, the voters hear only uncertain sounds from presidential candidates.
The incumbent Carter, having belatedly discovered that Brezhnev is a liar and that the Kremlin is ready, willing and able to engage in armed aggression, is thrashing around with stopgap measures he should have taken long ago. His opponents in both parties seek political or partisan advantage in order to harvest votes in the primaries, but present no workable alternatives.
Nothing will solve the Iranian or Afghanistan or future crises until Americans understand what kind of naked nuclear power the Russians are using. Their actions speak so loudly that we can hardly hear their words, but we should listen anyway.
The Hot Line from the Kremlin to the White House was designed for use in a nuclear confrontation. After Russian troops moved into Afghanistan, Brezhnev used it to tell Carter they would stay there until “they have completed their work.”
A Soviet diplomat in Iran was asked by a reporter what would happen if the Iranian student-mob had imprisoned Russians in their own embassy in Teheran as the American hostages have been treated. The Russian took out his watch and said, “It’s is now three o’clock. By 3:15, there would be no Iran.”
America is waiting for a presidential candidate in either party who will come forth with a platform to restore American power and prestige. The American people realize that it is more important for our country to be respected than to be loved, and they would support a plan of action to reach that goal.
1. Rebuild U.S. strategic military superiority so that we will not be subject to nuclear blackmail or a surprise attack on us our on our allies. No matter what this costs, it will be cheaper than allowing the Soviets to have the power to cut off our imported oil, to cause wild gyrations in the price of gold, the dollar, and the stock market, and to continue their encirclement of our nation and suffocation of our vital interests.
To achieve this objective, we should go into immediate production of the B-1 bomber, speed up production of the cruise missile, reopen the assembly line of the Minuteman III missiles and put them on mobile platforms, proceed quickly with building the MX mobile missile, and build Trident submarines at least as rapidly as the Soviets are building their Trident-class subs.
We must build an anti-missile defense so that our population and our cities will have some protection against missiles launched from Russia, Soviet submarines prowling our coasts, Cuba, or some third-world nation. We must build a civil defense system and a shelter program that is credible and not a joke (as is our present system).
This means scrapping the MAD (mutual assured destruction) strategy, which isn’t mutual and doesn’t assure anything except our own destruction. Obviously, the Soviets don’t believe it; when a dozen U.S. Senators traveled to Moscow last year to confer on the SALT II treaty, Brezhnev arrogantly said, “You know, gentlemen, I have the capability to destroy your entire country within 22 minutes.”
2. Stop permanently the subsidized shipment to Soviet bloc countries of technology and plants which build materials that can be used to wage war. The detente-lovers won the battle several years ago when they persuaded U.S. companies to design and equip the largest truck factory in the world near the Kama River in the Soviet Union. Trucks made there carried Soviet soldiers into Afghanistan to lock another country behind the iron curtain.
3. Organize an OPEC-type group of grain-producing exporters, of which there are only about a half dozen in the world ( the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina) so that food can be used to defend the free world and will be invulnerable to Soviet blackmail.
4. Adopt a program to make the United States self-sufficient in energy by reducing taxes on all domestic energy production, and by massive use of gasohol as the one immediate way to help sole both the gasoline shortage and the grain surplus problems.
